Re: Dual-Licensing Linux Kernel with GPL V2 and GPL V3

[Alexandre Oliva <aoliva@redhat.com>]

On Jun 18, 2007, "David Schwartz" <davids@webmaster.com> wrote:

>> First, end users buy and use the hardware in question.  It does not
>> belong to Tivo, so the analogy to his laptop fails there.

> No, this is incorrect. They buy *some* of the rights to the hardware but not
> all of them.

Wow, really?  I thought TiVo actually sold the computer.

Not that it would make a difference as far as GPLv3 is concerned.
It's still a user product, and it still contains GPLed software, and
TiVo distributes that software to other users.

> But you cannot coherently deny that TiVo retains this right when
> they sell certain other rights to the hardware.

Heh.  I mis-parsed "sell rights to the hardware".  How can the
hardware buy something?


Whatever rights TiVo wants to retain or keep from the user is of
little concern here, as long as this doesn't get in the way of the
user's exercise of the freedoms that the GPL stands to defend.  If it
wants to retain more rights than that, then it may have to refrain
from using GPLed software, or face the risk of a court finding it
couldn't have done that in the first place.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
FSF Latin America Board Member         http://www.fsfla.org/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}